ULTRADAMNATION: INDEBTED TO THE GODS OF THE DARK -- a first look

wip playbook art for THE CHOSEN ONE, by HZZRD666

a while ago i was having a chat with a friend about how different modes of play can bring you to different times on your life. this touched on something i've thought about a few times, that the OSR is a revisionist artistic movement. not necessarily in that it tells lies about history (although many of its self-accountings do), but in an artistic sense--it is a retelling of a retelling, an attempt not to capture the experience of playing AD&D in the 1980s but to capture the remembered feeling, your own or someone else's, of playing AD&D in the 1980s. & so i decided that i wanted to make a game about being an edgy middle schooler with half-demon ocs--not a game that replicates that feeling or experience, but replicates the way we imagine and remember it. so was born ULTRADAMNATION: INDEBTED TO THE GODS OF THE DARK, a chuunicore dark magic ultraviolent game about being a kid in a world that's set up to fuck you over.

in ULTRADAMNATION, you'll pick a SOLAR PLAYBOOK, representing the social pressures that act upon you in your mortal life as a high schooler, and a LUNAR PLAYBOOK, representing the occult debts and mystic obligations enmeshing you ever deeper into the world of magic. you'll spend the game accumulating DEBT, a measure of your ever mounting list of favours owed to the demons, spirits, ageless vampires, angels, and other forces older and more powerful than yourself seeking to use you for their own ends.

this is a much smaller project than Underside (which i'm still working on, don't worry!) and i'm hoping to have it in a playable state by early next year. unlike Underside, a titanic behemot which has been released in a very barebones playtest form, the first edition of U:ITTGOTD will have full layout and art by the wonderful HZZRD666, my co-creator on this project. i'll probably be releasing this under the HORIZON MACHINE imprint, which has been planned to expand beyond just citizen abel & me projects, but we'll see when we get there. but uhh that's not the exciting stuff, the exciting stuff is what can you expect from ULTRADAMNATION?

• 10 LUNAR PLAYBOOKS, each representing a different PATRON, the powers they give you and the freedoms they take from you in return

• a structured campaign style of play, where every session inevitably leads towards the fateful RITUAL ON PROM NIGHT to decide the fate of your character and the world

• a GRIMOIRE OF THE FORBIDDEN PLANETS, listing out 100+ spells with built-in horrible consequences should their magic escape your control

• a game that combines messy teen feelings, hyperviolence, and apocalyptic stakes with a specific concern on exploitation and abuse--with inspirations like evangelion, psycho nymph exile, chainsaw man, and homestuck.

wip playbook art for THE SCION, by HZZRD666

HZZRD and i are really excited about this project, and i hope we can share that excitement with anyone reading this who still has a fond spot for their edgy deviantart ocs with a glowing demon eye. thank you so much for your support, and see you here next month for (hopefully) a one-two punch of the Underside playtest's 1.2 update and The Game of the Ball, Part II.